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Grateful Dead - Live Bootleg 5/7/77

18/05/10 8:08 pm

These guys pretty much the standard for bands wanting a cult following, as well as the standard for drugged-out fans. They've also left behind an insane amount of live recordings which has defined them much more than their actual studio albums. Plus they actually had a literal wall of sound for a P.A. - suck on that Phil Spector.

The actual music is a lovely 70s ballad kinda style with actual stories in the lyrics. And of course the trademark extended jams.

I really like Jerry Garcia as a guitarist. He's not a shredder but fills in with a wonderful lyrical, melodic style.

You can find this whole concert online here.

Frank Zappa - Hot Rats

25/04/10 1:28 pm

Mr. Zappa is a very creative man. I found this album surprisingly short. The first song didn't really do it for me but some of the later ones were great interesting listening.
Dream Theater - Black Clouds & Silver Linings

20/04/10 3:12 pm

Aaah Dream Theatre. The band that never fails to offer up epic 20 minute tracks with epic musicianship and epic guitar and epic keyboards and epic drumming and dramatic, epic lyrics. They're pretty epic.

But for some reason, there's always a point where they feel the need to break out the 'Dynamic Piano 3' sound on the Roland and launch into a terrible, cringeworthy power ballad. Strange that.

This album is decent I guess, they just keep doing their thing. It's pretty funny that they give you a second CD which is just all the tracks from the first CD without the vocals. Supposedly it's the 'instrumental' version but it looks like an admission that their singer is average and the lyrics are tryhard.

But the funniest part was when they broke into Root Of All Evil halfway through track 3 (40 minutes into the album and they're only halfway through track 3?!?), almost like they were just testing to see if anyone was actually still listening.

Iron Maiden - The Number Of The Beast

18/03/10 7:17 pm

\m/ ><
At The Drive-In - Relationship Of Command

15/03/10 7:44 pm

It's a simple equation:

At The Drive-In > The Mars Volta + Sparta.

The break-up of At The Drive-In is an almost textbook case of creative differences, where you have one half go off to form the utterly boring Sparta and the other half letting loose with the insanity that is TMV. When they were together, ATD-I was more than the sum of these parts.

In this album the worst excesses of Cedric and Omar are restrained, almost unleashed by the rest of the band (who are sane). It's really interesting and original rock that has attracted such labels as 'post-punk' and 'post-hardcore'. Highlights for me are Pattern Against User and One Armed Scissor. Mannequin Republic, Cosmonaut, and Sleepwalk Capsules are also great. The last song Non-zero Possibility ruins the mode, it's just slow. What is it with these crappy boring closing songs? Overall it's an awesome album though.

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